One of the biggest stumbling blocks we hit when setting out to make our dreams come true is appreciating what is going well. Most of us have an unfortunate tendency to dwell on the problems rather than on the good things in our lives ... and then we wonder why things just seem to keep getting worse instead of better. In The Power of Appreciation in Everyday Life, psychologist Noelle Nelson explains how you can achieve success in every area of your life through transforming your beliefs with appreciation.

Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian subculture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. Yet apologists have all too often downplayed this background as potentially harmful to the reputation of a composer whom they regarded as the progenitor of modern French music. Whiting argues, on the contrary, that Satie's two decades in and around Montmartre decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies. He gives the fullest account to date of Satie's professional activities as a popular musician, and of how he transferred the parodic techniques and musical idioms of cabaret entertainment to works for concert hall. From the esoteric Gymnopédies to the bizarre suites of the 1910s and avant-garde ballets of the 1920s (not to mention music journalism and playwriting), Satie's output may be daunting in its sheer diversity and heterodoxy; but his radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in the fascinating context of bohemian Montmartre.

This is the first book-length study of the rich operatic repertory written and performed in France during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Steven Huebner gives an accessible and colorful account of such operatic favorites as Manon and Werther by Massenet, Louise by Charpentier, and lesser-known gems such as Chabrier's Le Roi malgré lui and Chausson's Le Roi Arthus.

An examination of the female opera singer during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Opera Acts explores a wealth of new historical material about singers in the late nineteenth century and challenges the idea that this was a period of decline for the opera singer. In detailed case studies of four figures - the late Verdi baritone Victor Maurel; Bizet's first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié; Massenet's muse of the 1880s and 1890s, Sibyl Sanderson; and the early Wagner star Jean de Reszke - Karen Henson argues that singers in the late nineteenth century continued to be important, but in ways that were not conventionally 'vocal'. Instead they enjoyed a freedom and creativity based on their ability to express text, act and communicate physically, and exploit the era's media. By these and other means, singers played a crucial role in the creation of opera up to the end of the nineteenth century.

What concepts must one have in order to understand and explain the nature and purpose, the plan and actualization, and the relational character of the liturgy? Volume 2: Fundamental Liturgy addresses this question in three parts - epistemology, celebration, and human sciences - which develop the foundational concepts of the liturgy. It leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the liturgy by examining the basic concepts that belong to its definition. Articles and their contributors are Theology of the Liturgy," by Alceste Catella;"Liturgical Symbolism," by Crispino Valenziano; "Liturgy and Spirituality," by Jesus Castellano Cervera, OCD; "Pastoral Liturgical Ministry," by Domenico Sartore, CSJ; "Catechesis and Liturgy," by Domenico Sartore, CSJ; "Liturgy and Ecclesiology," by Nathan Mitchell; "The Liturgical Assembly," by Mark Francis, CSV; "Participation in the Liturgy," by Anna Kai-Yung Chan; "Liturgical Ministries," by Thomas A. Krosnicki, SVD; "The Psychosociological Aspect of the Liturgy," by Lucio Maria Pinkus, OSM; "Liturgy and Anthropology: The Meaning and the Method of the Question," by Crispino Valenziano; "The Language of Liturgy," by Silvano Maggiani, OSM; "Liturgy and Aesthetic," by Silvano Maggiani, OSM; "Liturgy and Music," by Jan Michael Joncas; "Liturgy and Iconology," by Crispino Valenziano; and "Liturgy and Inculturation," by Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB and Silvano Maggiani, OSM "